Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Search This Blog

Pages

Movement, Dance, and A New Life

I thought after I got done with the last major segment of my life that I'd be putting roots down in my home area. You know. Hiking around, getting involved in a couple of community events and goings-on, that type of stuff. Apparently, my soul has all the energy of a hyper ten year old on Red Bull after Halloween. Since last Wednesday, I've been up to Reno, then to Mountain View, and then back home. Today, I'm headed to Santa Cruz. Friday, I'll be somewhere out in Sacramento, and on Saturday, I expect to be in Berkeley. Seriously, my soul just wants to move.

Soul DancingA friend of mine loves to use dance as meditation. I have to admit after all the hours perched on my butt with my eyes closed that moving meditation is very appealing to me right now. I checked out a class that she likes, and I can see why it resonates for her. There's a wonderful community around the dance practice (It's called 5Rhythms), and they do a nice job of creating a safe environment for personal exploration in movement. It's a fundamentally different type of dance. A lot of spaces where dance is involved in Western culture are clubs and bars, and there's nothing particularly free, clean, or safe about those places. They're usually dominated by desire, lust, judgment, and plenty of other icky stuff that keep people away from exploring movement and dance. But with this style, it's much more about exploring your body's inner space as well as how you move through the space around you. There's the opportunity to dance with others, which I've used in a more spontaneous way to see who gravitates to me and to whom I gravitate. It makes for an interesting new experience that I'm beginning to explore.

A New LifeI've some times told people in this past year that I feel like I've just come into a new life. I suppose that's what a "rebirth" is really. It still feels that way. I feel like I'm finding my feet in this new life and am not entirely sure about what's going on around me. It's another practice in vulnerability, but I feel like I'm working with it with more curiosity and wonder than before. I also find myself being very particular about who I spend time with again, but at the same time, it seems like everyone is reaching out to me again. People who I haven't heard from in months are suddenly looking me up. Moments like this always seem to tell me that something has shifted, and it's always nice to have the attention of so many great people.

Moving, Shifting, Living in the MomentHowever, there's a real sense of unsustainability in my life. I have the sense that everything is particularly temporary in this part of my life as well as in the grander scheme of what's going on with the world. Lots of structures are falling apart, and the more people try to hold onto them, the harder it will be for those people. It's a tough thing though. If a marriage of 20 years disintegrates, that's just hard. If your job of 10 years implodes, that's hard too. But these are the types of movements going on in the world, and in my life, I have that deeper understanding that I can't hold onto anything right now. I'm not using this phrase in the sense of "you can never hold onto anything" in life. I really am using it in the sense that right now structure just won't hold up, so relationships of any sort have to be held really lightly and with no expectation. I find myself very much drawn to established relationships as I move through this time period. I'm not sure what all will shake out during it, but I intend to keep moving and shifting as different people enter, embrace, and leave this dance with me.